'Dharker combines her poetry and drawings to deliver an exquisite and complex vision of exile, immigration, and adopted homelands. [...] This spectacular collection astonishes.' - Publishers Weekly

'Weaving between her distinctive illustrations and powerful poems, Dharker expresses the most profound concern for humanity.' – Jo Clement, PBS Selector, Poetry Book Society Summer Bulletin 2024, on Shadow Reader

‘I think she’s one of the world’s greatest contemporary poets.’ – Nikki Bedi, introducing Imtiaz Dharker on BBC Radio 4’s Saturday Live

'If you’re not a regular reader of poetry, Imtiaz Dharker gives you a place to start. Shadow Reader, her seventh collection from Bloodaxe, is not only easily accessible, but also hauntingly relevant in this time of war and displacement [...] With clever but not intrusive rhyme and rhythm these are poems to read aloud. And while there’s no hiding from the world’s reality […] ultimately Dharker’s poetry is a gesture of hope. “When you open the book, it opens you.”' – Graeme Richardson, The Sunday Times (Summer poetry round-up)

‘Dharker combines her poetry and drawings to deliver an exquisite and complex vision of exile, immigration, and adopted homelands. […] Dharker’s illustrations amplify the language of the poems to create potent visual metaphors, as in a series of drawings that depict threads of fabric on a traditional loom transforming into lines of poetry, suggesting an alchemical interplay between the two forms. […] This spectacular collection astonishes.’ – Publishers Weekly

‘… Dharker embarks on a looping, exploratory journey which is both an oblique autobiography and an examination of the state of the world in what was foretold to be her last year in it. The fairly plain style of these poems and their informal, often conversational tone, serve to draw the reader gently in among the dazzling range and variety of imagery and reference Dharker explores, from art to daily life, from mythology to the internet, from history to its present-day reverberations. [...] This is a rich collection [...] there is a lot to learn here, and to savour.' – Judith Taylor, The High Window

‘…terrific, transcendent poems, which go from grit to heart, sorrow to song, and all between. It’s a stunner of a collection…’ – Mab Jones, Buzz Magazine

‘Imtiaz Dharker's Shadow Reader is a joy. I admire poetry which draws on the political. Imtiaz's poems do this so well […] Her work always comes from a fresh angle […] Poetry of empathy, love & revelation.’ – Katrina Naomi, Short & Sweet (Recommended Read for July 2024)

'Imtiaz Dharker's new collection is the crown to a celebratory, humane, wholly utterable, subtly crafted poetry. Its dark jewels are the magnificent poems of bereavement, which will surely endure. Reading her, one feels that were there to be a World Laureate, Imtiaz Dharker would be the only candidate.' - Carol Ann Duffy [on Over the Moon]

‘Imtiaz Dharker’s poetry shines a light in the dark. She is interested in how things work, in art, in history, in politics… You cannot hear her perform without being somehow transformed by the experience. Witty, wise, profound and moving, her work crosses continents.’ – Jackie Kay, The Guardian

'The motif of weaving holds together form and theme with a tantalising sense of skilful improvisation, nowhere more so than in ‘Loom’ where the women’s art is intensely embodied [...] Shadow Reader is a thought-provoking, delightful collection from the skilled hands of an expert weaver.' – Theresa Sowerby, Orbis

‘As an accomplished artist with her work exhibited internationally, the drawings here are in fastidious detail, woven with fine lines, while the diminutive specks compose a play of light. Their metaphorical images make an artistic statement and complement their relevant poems. The poise radiates continuance, command, and composure.’ – Yogesh Patel, World Literature Today

‘Dharker never offers easy solutions or conclusions, but towards the end of the collection there’s a sense of looking back on something hard-won, of not only the Shadow Reader, but other assumptions too, being proved wrong. ‘You are’, one of the last poems in the book, pulls what is an outstanding collection together beautifully and movingly’ – Matt Merritt, Magma

‘This week's poem is by globally acclaimed poet, artist and filmmaker Imtiaz Dharker, who grew up in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. This is from her new collection Shadow Reader, which nods to exclusions and erasures, as well as being a playful celebration of life in all its glory; full of joyous language and rich imagery.’ – The Scotsman, Poem of the Week, on ‘Back’ from Shadow Reader

'Luck is the Hook by Imtiaz Dharker is my stand-out book of poetry this year. Lyrical with a compassionate humanity, Dharker’s poems have a piercing, deceptive simplicity of image and language, particularly the poems about the loss of her husband and her bereavement...Her poems have great musicality, written for the ear as much as the page. A striking performer, it is particularly pleasurable to hear her read. A talented artist, her repetition of concepts or images in new contexts weaving throughout the book is a technique echoed in the black and white drawings illustrating the book, their delicacy and simplicity of tonal patterns evoking the essence of each poem’s theme. An exquisite, deeply moving collection.' - Stephanie Green, Glasgow Review of Books (Reads of the Year, 2018)

‘This is a passionate, uplifting collection of poems about language, love and loss, grief and joy, elegy and celebration. The loss of a great love makes poems of piercing beauty. In her finest book to date, Imtiaz Dharker finds resolution in language itself, and in a world the more loved for the sharpness of loss.’ – Gillian Clarke [on Over the Moon]

Imtiaz Dharker grew up a Muslim Calvinist in a Lahori household in Glasgow, was adopted by India and married into Wales. She is an accomplished artist and documentary film-maker, and has published six books with Bloodaxe, Postcards from god (including Purdah) (1997), I Speak for the Devil (2001), The terrorist at my table (2006), Leaving Fingerprints (2009), Over the Moon (2014) and Luck Is the Hook (2018). She was awarded The Queen's Gold Medal for Poetry for 2014, presented to her by The Queen in spring 2015, and has also received a Cholmondeley Award from the Society of Authors and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2019 she was appointed Chancellor of Newcastle University.

  11     In the Year of My Death
    13     Out of the rose garden
    14     Story
    15     (But the roses are savages)
    17     The map of this country is made of scars
    19     Face to face
    21     Witness
    23     The Show
    24     They brought glass beads
    26     Boy with a Turban
    27     Letters home
    29     Did anyone say what happened to the girl?
    31     Loom
    33     The weaver makes a pitch
    35     (This is not a prayer mat)
    36     Shadow Reader
    37     The weaver tells the spell
    41     Demons Rule
    43     What goes of your father?
    44     Fly
    47     I am Not Alone
    49     The Shadow Reader Is Measuring
    50     Saying No
    51     Pink
    52     Chori
    54     Where you belong
    55     What it grows into
    56     Back
    57     Redeem
    59     (When you hear the wind)
    60     The welcome
    62     The key
    63     Reader
    64     The piece
    66     For the Minicab Driver Who Looked as if He Needed Feeding
    67     For the Woman Who Will Bring Biryani Next Time
    68     For the Girl on the Elizabeth Line
    69     For the Woman Who Changed Back to a Snake
    70     Cross
    71     So How Does This Work? I ask
    73     (A door full of light)
    74     Swiping Left on Larkin
    76     Let’s Meet in the Place Called Jazz
    77     In Which I Am Ghosted by William Blake
    79     I Find Faiz Blowing on His Saucer of Tea
    81     Away
    83     There are no words
    84     Next
    85     For the girl whose hair escaped
    87     What it is like
    88     What you can buy with a bangle
    89     Naa Ja
    90     However
    93     It was the fault of the clothes
    94     (Only you can tell)
    95     They arrive
    96     Fold
    98     They leave
    99     As they go
    100     (Take one step forward)
    103     They are walking
    105     Night Walk with Ghosts, Smithfield
    106     Night Walk with Dancing Bones
    107     Night Walk by the Canal
    108     Night Walk with Lit Windows
    110     Night Walk with Fox
    111     Night Walk with Blackbird
    113     Night Walk with Voices
    115     Cranes lean in
    116     Seen from a drone, Delhi
    118     Seen from a drone, Mumbai
    120     Seen from a drone
    121     On mute
    122     One says this, another says that
    123     X
    124     (Life chases your feet)
    125     Sweeping
    127     Writing the Will
    129     She Is Trying On the Pre-loved Shoes
    130     What Bunny-Auntie Says to Bobby-Uncle
    131     She Has an Off-day
    132     Bobby Saves Nature to the Cloud
    133     Auntie Death Says She Slays
    134     Bubbles Experiences a Moment of Dread
    135     She Contemplates Her Death
    136     Donor
    137     Night Visitors
    138     The Host
    141     The Guest
    143     With empty hands
    144     You write a window
    145     Go to the child
    147     (This is the embrace)
    148     You are
    150     We are holding
    151     But the radiance
    153     (We turn our faces up)
    154     Your Session Has Been Terminated
    155     Everywhere the angels
    156     I Walk in the Shadow
       
    158     Acknowledgements